OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Making Sense of Metadata Mess: Alignment & Risk Assessment for Diatom Data Use Case
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2024
Year: 2024

Biologists study Diatoms, a fundamental algae, to assess the health of aquatic systems. Diatom specimens have traditionally been preserved on analog slides, where a single slide can contain thousands of these microscopic organisms. Digitization of these collections presents both metadata challenges and opportunities. This paper reports on metadata research aimed at providing access to a digital portion of the Academy of Natural Sciences' Diatom Herbarium, Drexel University. We report results of a 3-part study covering 1) a review of relevant metadata standards and a microscopy metadata framework shared by Hammer et al., 2) a baseline metadata alignment mapping current diatom metadata properties to standard metadata types, and 3) a metadata risk analysis associated with the course of standard data curation practices. This research is part of an effort involving the transfer of these digital slides to an new system, DataFed, to support global accessible. The final section of this paper includes a conclusion and discusses next steps.
Community-Based Resilience: Digital Technologies for Living within Planetary Boundaries
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2024
Year: 2024

The world faces increasing challenges related to climate change and shifting geopolitical situations. The COVID 19 pandemic clearly illustrated the need for resilience not just within civil engineering but also within social and economic systems. While significant work has focused on applying digital technologies to solve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), less effort has been placed on the ability of digital technologies to enable humanity to continue to live effectively within the Planetary Boundaries. Within this paper, we perform a Systematic Literature Review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses (PRISMA) methodology. Nine hundred and twenty papers were reviewed. Based on the Systematic Literature Review (SLR), we have outlined specific methods to apply digital technologies to enable humanity to live within PB. Critical capabilities provided by digital technologies, specifically the ability to create dynamic networks for enabling humanity to live within PB, are identified and illustrated in food and agriculture. The paper closes with a brief assessment of the concept's applicability to other Critical National Infrastructure.
Leveraging Large Language Models for Code-Mixed Data Augmentation in Sentiment Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Code-mixing (CM), where speakers blend languages within a single expression, is prevalent in multilingual societies but poses challenges for natural language processing due to its complexity and limited data. We propose using a large language model to generate synthetic CM data, which is then used to enhance the performance of task-specific models for CM sentiment analysis. Our results show that in Spanish-English, synthetic data improved the F1 score by 9.32%, outperforming previous augmentation techniques. However, in Malayalam-English, synthetic data only helped when the baseline was low; with strong natural data, additional synthetic data offered little benefit. Human evaluation confirmed that this approach is a simple, cost-effective way to generate natural-sounding CM sentences, particularly beneficial for low baselines. Our findings suggest that few-shot prompting of large language models is a promising method for CM data augmentation and has significant impact on improving sentiment analysis, an important element in the development of social influence systems.
SPRING Lab IITM's submission to Low Resource Indic Language Translation Shared Task
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

We develop a robust translation model for four low-resource Indic languages: Khasi, Mizo, Manipuri, and Assamese. Our approach includes a comprehensive pipeline from data collection and preprocessing to training and evaluation, leveraging data from WMT task datasets, BPCC, PMIndia, and OpenLanguageData. To address the scarcity of bilingual data, we use back-translation techniques on monolingual datasets for Mizo and Khasi, significantly expanding our training corpus. We fine-tune the pre-trained NLLB 3.3B model for Assamese, Mizo, and Manipuri, achieving improved performance over the baseline. For Khasi, which is not supported by the NLLB model, we introduce special tokens and train the model on our Khasi corpus. Our training involves masked language modelling, followed by fine-tuning for English-to-Indic and Indic-to-English translations.
Polymorphic Metaprogramming with Memory Management -- An Adjoint Analysis of Metaprogramming
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2024
Year: 2024

We describe Elevator, a unifying polymorphic foundation for metaprogramming with memory management based on adjoint modalities. In this setting, we distinguish between multiple memory regions using modes where each mode has a specific set of structural properties. This allows us not only to capture linear (i.e. garbage-free) memory regions and (ordinary) intuitionistic (i.e. garbage-collected or persistent) memory regions, but also to capture accessibility between the memory regions using a preorder between modes. This preorder gives us the power to describe monadic and comonadic programming. As a consequence, it extends the existing logical view of metaprogramming in two directions: first, it ensures that code generation can be done efficiently by controlling memory accesses; second, it allows us to provide resource guarantees about the generated code (i.e. code that is for example garbage-free). We present the static and dynamic semantics of Elevator. In particular, we prove the substructurality of variable references and type safety of the language. We also establish mode safety, which guarantees that the evaluation of a term does not access a value in an inaccessible memory.
LCP: Enhancing Scientific Data Management with Lossy Compression for Particles
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

Many scientific applications opt for particles instead of meshes as their basic primitives to model complex systems composed of billions of discrete entities. Such applications span a diverse array of scientific domains, including molecular dynamics, cosmology, computational fluid dynamics, and geology. The scale of the particles in those scientific applications increases substantially thanks to the ever-increasing computational power in high-performance computing (HPC) platforms. However, the actual gains from such increases are often undercut by obstacles in data management systems related to data storage, transfer, and processing. Lossy compression has been widely recognized as a promising solution to enhance scientific data management systems regarding such challenges, although most existing compression solutions are tailored for Cartesian grids and thus have sub-optimal results on discrete particle data. In this paper, we introduce LCP, an innovative lossy compressor designed for particle datasets, offering superior compression quality and higher speed than existing compression solutions. Specifically, our contribution is threefold. (1) We propose LCP-S, an error-bound aware block-wise spatial compressor to efficiently reduce particle data size. This approach is universally applicable to particle data across various domains. (2) We develop LCP, a hybrid compression solution for multi-frame particle data, featuring dynamic method selection and parameter optimization. (3) We evaluate our solution alongside eight state-of-the-art alternatives on eight real-world particle datasets from seven distinct domains. The results demonstrate that our solution achieves up to 104% improvement in compression ratios and up to 593% increase in speed compared to the second-best option, under the same error criteria.
Novel operational algorithms for ride-pooling as on-demand feeder services
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2024
Year: 2024

Ride-pooling (RP) service, as a form of shared mobility, enables multiple riders with similar itineraries to share the same vehicle and split the fee. This makes RP a promising on-demand feeder service for patrons with a common trip end in urban transportation. We propose the RP as Feeder (RPaF) services with tailored operational algorithms. Specifically, we have developed (i) a batch-based matching algorithm that pools a batch of requests within an optimized buffer distance to each RP vehicle; (ii) a dispatching algorithm that adaptively dispatches vehicles to pick up the matched requests for certain occupancy target; and (iii) a repositioning algorithm that relocates vehicles to unmatched requests based on their level of urgency. An agent-based microscopic simulation platform is designed to execute these operational algorithms (via the Operator module), generate spatially distributed random requests (Patron module), and account for traffic conditions (Vehicle module) in street networks. Extensive numerical experiments are conducted to showcase the effectiveness of RPaF services across various demand scenarios in typical morning rush hours. We compare RFaF with two on-demand feeder counterparts proposed in previous studies: Ride-Sharing as Feeder (RSaF) and Flexible-Route Feeder-Bus Transit (Flex-FBT). Comparisons reveal that given the same fleet size, RPaF generally outperforms RSaF in higher service rates (i.e., the percentage of requests served over all requests) and Flex-FBT in shorter average trip times for patrons. Lastly, we illustrate the implementation of RPaF in a real-world case study of the uptown Manhattan network (USA) using actual taxi trip data. The results demonstrate that RPaF effectively balances the level of service (service rate and patrons' average trip time) with operational costs (fleet size).
Approximating Diffusion on Finite Multi-Topology Systems Using Ultrametrics
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2024
Year: 2024

Motivated by multi-topology building and city model data, first a lossless representation of multiple $T_0$-topologies on a given finite set by a vertex-edge-weighted graph is given, and the subdominant ultrametric of the associated weighted graph distance matrix is proposed as an index structure for these data. This is applied in a heuristic parallel topological sort algorithm for edge-weighted directed acyclic graphs. Such structured data are of interest in simulation of processes like heat flows on building or city models on distributed processors. With this in view, the bulk of this article calculates the spectra of certain unbounded self-adjoint $p$-adic Laplacian operators on the $L^2$-spaces of a compact open subdomain of the $p$-adic number field associated with a finite graph $G$ with respect to the restricted Haar measure. as well as to a Radon measure coming from an ultrametric on the vertices of $G$ with the help of $p$-adic polynomial interpolation. In the end, error bounds are given for the solutions of the corresponding heat equations by finite approximations of such operators.
Personality Analysis from Online Short Video Platforms with Multi-domain Adaptation
Venue: arXiv cs.MM 2024
Year: 2024

Personality analysis from online short videos has gained prominence due to its applications in personalized recommendation systems, sentiment analysis, and human-computer interaction. Traditional assessment methods, such as questionnaires based on the Big Five Personality Framework, are limited by self-report biases and are impractical for large-scale or real-time analysis. Leveraging the rich, multi-modal data present in short videos offers a promising alternative for more accurate personality inference. However, integrating these diverse and asynchronous modalities poses significant challenges, particularly in aligning time-varying data and ensuring models generalize well to new domains with limited labeled data. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-modal personality analysis framework that addresses these challenges by synchronizing and integrating features from multiple modalities and enhancing model generalization through domain adaptation. We introduce a timestamp-based modality alignment mechanism that synchronizes data based on spoken word timestamps, ensuring accurate correspondence across modalities and facilitating effective feature integration. To capture temporal dependencies and inter-modal interactions, we employ Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory networks and self-attention mechanisms, allowing the model to focus on the most informative features for personality prediction. Furthermore, we develop a gradient-based domain adaptation method that transfers knowledge from multiple source domains to improve performance in target domains with scarce labeled data. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that our framework significantly outperforms existing methods in personality prediction tasks, highlighting its effectiveness in capturing complex behavioral cues and robustness in adapting to new domains.
Automatic feature selection and weighting in molecular systems using Differentiable Information Imbalance
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Feature selection is essential in the analysis of molecular systems and many other fields, but several uncertainties remain: What is the optimal number of features for a simplified, interpretable model that retains essential information? How should features with different units be aligned, and how should their relative importance be weighted? Here, we introduce the Differentiable Information Imbalance (DII), an automated method to rank information content between sets of features. Using distances in a ground truth feature space, DII identifies a low-dimensional subset of features that best preserves these relationships. Each feature is scaled by a weight, which is optimized by minimizing the DII through gradient descent. This allows simultaneously performing unit alignment and relative importance scaling, while preserving interpretability. DII can also produce sparse solutions and determine the optimal size of the reduced feature space. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach on two benchmark molecular problems: (1) identifying collective variables that describe conformations of a biomolecule, and (2) selecting features for training a machine-learning force field. These results show the potential of DII in addressing feature selection challenges and optimizing dimensionality in various applications. The method is available in the Python library DADApy.
Profiling AI Models: Towards Efficient Computation Offloading in Heterogeneous Edge AI Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The rapid growth of end-user AI applications, such as computer vision and generative AI, has led to immense data and processing demands often exceeding user devices' capabilities. Edge AI addresses this by offloading computation to the network edge, crucial for future services in 6G networks. However, it faces challenges such as limited resources during simultaneous offloads and the unrealistic assumption of homogeneous system architecture. To address these, we propose a research roadmap focused on profiling AI models, capturing data about model types, hyperparameters, and underlying hardware to predict resource utilisation and task completion time. Initial experiments with over 3,000 runs show promise in optimising resource allocation and enhancing Edge AI performance.
Revolutionizing Personalized Cancer Vaccines with NEO: Novel Epitope Optimization Using an Aggregated Feed Forward and Recurrent Neural Network with LSTM Architecture
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

As cancer cases continue to rise, with a 2023 study from Zhejiang and Harvard predicting a 31 percent increase in cases and a 21 percent increase in deaths by 2030, the need to find more effective treatments for cancer is greater than ever before. Traditional approaches to treating cancer, such as chemotherapy, often kill healthy cells because of their lack of targetability. In contrast, personalized cancer vaccines can utilize neoepitopes - distinctive peptides on cancer cells that are often missed by the body's immune system - that have strong binding affinities to a patient's MHC to provide a more targeted treatment approach. The selection of optimal neoepitopes that elicit an immune response is a time-consuming and costly process due to the required inputs of modern predictive methods. This project aims to facilitate faster, cheaper, and more accurate neoepitope binding predictions using Feed Forward Neural Networks (FFNN) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). To address this, NEO was created. NEO requires next-generation sequencing data and uses a stacking ensemble method by calculating scores from state-of-the-art models (MHCFlurry 1.6, NetMHCstabpan 1.0, and IEDB). The model's architecture includes an FFNN and an RNN with LSTM layers capable of analyzing both sequential and non-sequential data. The results from both models are aggregated to produce predictions. Using this model, personalized cancer vaccines can be produced with improved results (AUC = 0.9166, recall = 91.67 percent).
Replace-then-Perturb: Targeted Adversarial Attacks With Visual Reasoning for Vision-Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

The conventional targeted adversarial attacks add a small perturbation to an image to make neural network models estimate the image as a predefined target class, even if it is not the correct target class. Recently, for visual-language models (VLMs), the focus of targeted adversarial attacks is to generate a perturbation that makes VLMs answer intended target text outputs. For example, they aim to make a small perturbation on an image to make VLMs' answers change from "there is an apple" to "there is a baseball." However, answering just intended text outputs is insufficient for tricky questions like "if there is a baseball, tell me what is below it." This is because the target of the adversarial attacks does not consider the overall integrity of the original image, thereby leading to a lack of visual reasoning. In this work, we focus on generating targeted adversarial examples with visual reasoning against VLMs. To this end, we propose 1) a novel adversarial attack procedure -- namely, Replace-then-Perturb and 2) a contrastive learning-based adversarial loss -- namely, Contrastive-Adv. In Replace-then-Perturb, we first leverage a text-guided segmentation model to find the target object in the image. Then, we get rid of the target object and inpaint the empty space with the desired prompt. By doing this, we can generate a target image corresponding to the desired prompt, while maintaining the overall integrity of the original image. Furthermore, in Contrastive-Adv, we design a novel loss function to obtain better adversarial examples. Our extensive benchmark results demonstrate that Replace-then-Perturb and Contrastive-Adv outperform the baseline adversarial attack algorithms. We note that the source code to reproduce the results will be available.
Differentiable architecture search with multi-dimensional attention for spiking neural networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2024
Year: 2024

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) have gained enormous popularity in the field of artificial intelligence due to their low power consumption. However, the majority of SNN methods directly inherit the structure of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), usually leading to sub-optimal model performance in SNNs. To alleviate this problem, we integrate Neural Architecture Search (NAS) method and propose Multi-Attention Differentiable Architecture Search (MA-DARTS) to directly automate the search for the optimal network structure of SNNs. Initially, we defined a differentiable two-level search space and conducted experiments within micro architecture under a fixed layer. Then, we incorporated a multi-dimensional attention mechanism and implemented the MA-DARTS algorithm in this search space. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate our model achieves state-of-the-art performance on classification compared to other methods under the same parameters with 94.40% accuracy on CIFAR10 dataset and 76.52% accuracy on CIFAR100 dataset. Additionally, we monitored and assessed the number of spikes (NoS) in each cell during the whole experiment. Notably, the number of spikes of the whole model stabilized at approximately 110K in validation and 100k in training on datasets.
From Fake Perfects to Conversational Imperfects: Exploring Image-Generative AI as a Boundary Object for Participatory Design of Public Spaces
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

Designing public spaces requires balancing the interests of diverse stakeholders within a constrained physical and institutional space. Designers usually approach these problems through participatory methods but struggle to incorporate diverse perspectives into design outputs. The growing capabilities of image-generative artificial intelligence (IGAI) could support participatory design. Prior work in leveraging IGAI's capabilities in design has focused on augmenting the experience and performance of individual creators. We study how IGAI could facilitate participatory processes when designing public spaces, a complex collaborative task. We conducted workshops and IGAI-mediated interviews in a real-world participatory process to upgrade a park in Los Angeles. We found (1) a shift from focusing on accuracy to fostering richer conversations as the desirable outcome of adopting IGAI in participatory design, (2) that IGAI promoted more space-aware conversations, and (3) that IGAI-mediated conversations are subject to the abilities of the facilitators in managing the interaction between themselves, the AI, and stakeholders. We contribute by discussing practical implications for using IGAI in participatory design, including success metrics, relevant skills, and asymmetries between designers and stakeholders. We finish by proposing a series of open research questions.
Attributes of a Great Requirements Engineer
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

[Context and Motivation] Several studies have investigated attributes of great software practitioners. However, the investigation of such attributes is still missing in Requirements Engineering (RE). The current knowledge on attributes of great software practitioners might not be easily translated to the context of RE because its activities are, usually, less technical and more human-centered than other software engineering activities. [Question/Problem] This work aims to investigate which are the attributes of great requirements engineers, the relationship between them, and strategies that can be employed to obtain these attributes. We follow a method composed of a survey with 18 practitioners and follow up interviews with 11 of them. [Principal Ideas/Results] Investigative ability in talking to stakeholders, judicious, and understand the business are the most commonly mentioned attributes amongst the set of 22 attributes identified, which were grouped into four categories. We also found 38 strategies to improve RE skills. Examples are training, talking to all stakeholders, and acquiring domain knowledge. [Contribution] The attributes, their categories, and relationships are organized into a map. The relations between attributes and strategies are represented in a Sankey diagram. Software practitioners can use our findings to improve their understanding about the role and responsibilities of requirements engineers.